Thinking up new local places to shop : the creation of shopping centres downtown.
Faced with a substantial loss of shops and consumers to their outskirts, most French towns now have an ambition to increase the attractiveness of their town centres. The new expectations of consumers in terms of products and comfort in making purchases (natural light, rest areas, quality of materials, etc.) make the creation of shopping centres in town centres one of the key factors in such reinvigoration.
Argenteuil, Brest, Roubaix, Le Havre. All these towns have called upon the skills and experience of ALTAREA to design facilities of human dimensions, open to the town, offering suitable products and having modern architecture.
In partnership with the SNCF, ALTAREA is also creating the first French shopping centre to be located in a station, at Gare du Nord, Europe's leading station with 100 million passengers per year. With "Les Boutiques Gare du Nord", which covers 3,800m², ALTAREA has invented a new concept, a far cry from the platform shop and the traditional service brands, to attract a very diverse clientele on a site designed above all to be a place where people pass through and can make rapid purchases. The concept will be repeated at Gare de l'Est in Paris.
ALTAREA is thus open to collective projects and can create new local shops for the benefit of consumers.
The Espace Jaurès has been created within the existing framework of rue Jean-Jaurès, one of the main shopping streets in Brest's city centre. It has been developed on what was an old commercial wasteland, being built on the site of the department store Nouvelles Galeries which closed in 1990. This wasteland was damaging to the image and business of the heart of the city. The centre has now increased the attractiveness of this main street by its shopping synergy with Printemps and the shopping centre Coat Ar Gueven (opened by GEREC in 1985), the three together representing an overall area of more than 40,000m2.
The Espace Jaurès has a unique place among them, due to its innovative character.
